Choose the word or set of words that best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

1. Unwilling to admit that they had been in error, the researchers tried to ____ their case with more data obtained from dubious sources.

2. Archaeology is a poor profession; only ____ sums are available for excavating sites and even more ____ amounts for preserving the excavations.

3. The student was extremely foolhardy; he had the ____ to question the senior professor's judgment.

4. The formerly ____ waters of the lake have been polluted so that the fish are no longer visible from the surface.

5. After the accident, the nerves to her arm were damaged and so the muscles ____ through disuse.

6. Some critics maintain that Tennyson's poetry is uneven, ranging from the ____ to the ____.

7. After grafting there is a ____ of lymphocytes in the lymph glands; the newly produced lymphocytes then move in to attack the foreign tissue.

8. One ____ the new scheme is that it might actually ____ just those applicants that it was intended to encourage.

9. Corruption is ____ in our society; the integrity of even senior officials is ____ .

10. In their day to day decision making, many senior managers do not follow the rational model favored by orthodox management experts, but rather rely on intuitive processes that often appear ____ and ____.

11. His characteristically ____ views on examination methods at university level have aroused ____ in those who want to introduce innovative and flexible patterns of assessment.

12. Our grandfather was an entertaining ____; he used to ____ us with marvelous anecdotes that we, in our childlike simplicity, accepted unquestioningly.